The Volturi Guard's Memories
by lizzyvamp1901
Summary: Childhood is important. It shapes the way we are, and the way we will be. Too bad the members of the Volturi Guard had such terrible ones...
1. Chapter 1: The crown

Heidi hates crowns. She refuses to tell anyone why.

But Aro knows, and therefore, so does Sulpicia. They both understand. And they, too, have grown to dislike tiaras.

She loved them, a long, long time ago. Heidi used to play dress up, and she loved to disguise herself as a princess.

Her life was perfect. She was gorgeous, smart, and had her whole life planned. She would go to college and study Drama. It was all great until her mother died.

At first, nothing changed, though everything did. She still went to school, got good grades, went to parties. And then one day she came home and found her father drunk. His wife's death had left him hollow, empty, and craving. Craving what, you may ask. The answer was simple: sex.

After all, Heidi was twelve then. Curves were starting to appear. She had just gotten her period. And- God, it was so cliché- she was the spitting image of her mother.

That night, her screams filled the house. He called her his princess. He put her old tiara on her head, laughing at her, _mocking_ her. He told her she was never to tell.

"Off with her head!" He cried drunkenly "Right, Princess?"

She pleaded, she begged for him to stop. She crawled, she writhed, gave up every ounce of dignity she had, and he still refused. While she cried, he giggled.

When she woke up the next morning, nothing was the same. The rooms that had once seemed secure had become threatening. Her beloved crown lay in a corner, forgotten. Heidi had bruises all over to try and cover.

For the next six years, her house was turned into her own personal hell by the man that had once kissed her goodnight and tucked her in. Now the only kisses she got were rough, lusty ones and given by a drunk, sex-crazed man that she was ashamed to call her father.

He wouldn't let her go to college. After she turned eighteen, the only time he let her go out was when she had to buy more groceries. The woman that worked as a night clerk in the nearest Seven Eleven always wondered why the girl bought so many condoms.

The neighbors pretended that they couldn't hear the screams coming from the ordinary white house.

One day, she got mad. For the first time since her mother's death, Heidi felt something. So she poisoned his tea and laughed. She laughed, and then she cried. Like everything she did, she did it well. She was never caught.

In the end, she got a scholarship to a college in Italy. Aro found her once when he was out, prowling the dark streets.

Heidi's room is now sacred, her very own personal heaven. No one is allowed to go in. Once, Felix tried, and she slammed him into the wall, sobbing. It took her weeks to recover from the shock.

She painted the walls as blue as the sky, so she would never feel trapped again. She added clouds, grass, got a laptop and a desk. She refused to get a bed, settling for a couch and two armchairs instead. And yet, her old crown lay in a corner- and it wasn't forgotten anymore.

Afterwards, no matter how much they tried, neither her nor Aro quite managed to forget the screams from her memories.


	2. Chapter 2: Red Nail Polish

Renata's mother used to paint her fingernails red. Decades afterwards, when most things from her human life had been forgotten, Renata would remember he mother's blood red nails. And even though she was a powerful vampire, she would shudder.

"You wicked girl!" She would snarl. Then the blows came, and they landed everywhere. On her face, her arms, her legs… And all the neighbors could hear would be the sound of a little girl, crying.

"She's very sensitive" Her mother would explain when someone asked about it. "Once, she started to cry because I turned off the radio!"

So Renata would huddle in a corner of the living room and try to make it through the next day without getting any bones broken.

When she turned ten, she stopped wondering why her father had left them and started wondering why he hadn't taken _her_.

She used to sing. Renata could hardly remember- even when she was a human- the time when her mother had sung all the time. She'd fill the house with flowers and music. And her parents locked their door at night.

At thirteen, a boy at school invited her to a New Year's Eve party his family was throwing. Thrilled- and knowing her mother would be too drunk to care- Renata agreed.

She took her mom's fancy pink dress. She even got a friend to do her hair and paint her nails.

That party she would never forget. The boy's house was full of people. There were all kinds of food: paella, _congri_ (rice with black beans), turkey, and even _tostones_ (fried bananas). Loud music blared from a radio.

The night was filled with dancing. Renata had never learned, so she watched the couples doing the salsa and thought. She thought hard. She knew for a fact that those people's lives weren't perfect: they were filled with divorces, unpaid bills, starving children, and hate for the president. And yet they danced. The women twirled happily guided by the men, their skirts whirling around merrily. The children just shook their arms and legs as hard as they could, trying to copy their elders.

The cold night air carried the sound of laughter, and Renata learned that she could be like those people- she, too, could dance her troubles away.

But she soon forgot that, for the boy was clumsy, and he spilled his drink on his date's skirt. Horrified, Renata ran back home. She locked herself in the bathroom and tried to wash the dark stain off. She didn't succeed.

The next morning, when her mother opened her closet and saw the Coke on her dress, she was furious. And she yelled long and loud. Renata begged for forgiveness, but it was all in vain.

She got whipped with her father's belt that night. And the next. And the night after that. The only witness was the oak outside her bedroom window. So it came to be that, for years, the Cuban night was once again filled with her screams.

No one knows how Renata got to Italy, but the rumors say that after Aro touched her for the first time, he started to cry.

Every year, for the fifth of May, Renata puts on a red dress. She paints her fingernails red. She turns up the volume on her old radio, and starts to dance. Most think she does it to forget.

She keeps to herself, now. She hardly ever speaks. But Corin's room is next to hers, and after fifty years, he swears that every night, he can still hear her soft sobbing.


	3. Chapter 3: The invisible cage

Corin is one of the few vampires in the Volturi Castle for whom immortality was a blessing.

His memories of his human life refuse to fade with time, showing how deeply they scarred him, how hugely they changed him.

He was deaf. Mute, too, as if not being able to hear wasn't enough of a curse. Corin spent his days trapped in an invisible cage of suffering, feeling everything but without words to express himself.

They all thought he was stupid. Even his beloved mother. It was the XVIIth century, after all. What did he expect? They were only commoners, after all, nothing important to anybody.

But no one could deny the fact that he was handsome- as handsome as a moonlit night. His beauty ignited a hidden fire within the beholder's soul, a very, very dark one, yet one that shone brightly.

Corin was a contradiction. How could he have beautiful thoughts without words? How could he wonder, how could he even _think_, when he had no words to think _about_? Yet think he did.

He suffered every night his father was home. Every blow to his mother and to his four beautiful sisters stung as much as if he had hit him instead. Corin suffered, confined to the limitations of a weak body that repressed his indomitable rage, only letting it show through his face.

He never hit his father. He was too weak to even try- lack of exercise had left his muscles as brittle and soft as an old man's. All he could do was place the girls behind him and send God a quick, wordless prayer to help him out.

They say Eleazar sensed him from miles away. Corin's power? Transmitting his thoughts to others, ironically enough. God had finally answered him, but it was too late for him to care.

He was bitten as soon as he turned twenty. Corin learned to speak, write, and- his greatest achievement- ended his family's problems by snapping his father's neck and draining him dry during one of his visits to the local whorehouse. He felt disgusted afterwards.

After twenty years of perpetual rage and helplessness, life in the Volturi Castle was good enough for him.

If only he could've forgotten the memories.

* * *

**Review!!**

**By the way, a new story named TWILIGHT PARODY is coming soon. It's hilarious, and you'll probably enjoy it!**

**Suscribe!!**


	4. Chapter 4: Stripes

Jane and Alec share a room. They painted it yellow, with blue stripes.

The yellow is for the color of the dress their mother was wearing in the only picture they have of her. The blue is for their father's eyes in that same picture.

The twins have been orphans for as long as they can remember. None of them ever knew what it was like to be safe and loved. They prowled the streets since they were toddlers, trying to find food and a safe place to spend the night.

They used to be happy.

When they both turned twelve, the abandoned barn they were staying in collapsed. Jane and Alec were able to climb out. There was a mob of people waiting for them. They yelled that they had destroyed the barn with their demonic powers and then escaped.

Alec watched in horror as the townspeople snatched his sister away. She was sobbing and yelling his name desperately. He struggled against his captors, trying to reach her, to hug her, to comfort her. Instead, he got them both slapped.

They were tied to a wooden stake, with dry wood below them. Jane turned her head to look at her brother sadly.

Neither of them ever forgot the cheers of the crowd. The laughter and delighted faces of innocent children. The sneer on the face of the man that lit the first match.

"Burn them! Burn the witch twins!" They yelled.

And then, they were burning. Jane's dress caught fire quickly; Alec was only getting his feet burned.

He looked at her, blinking away the tears of pain and anguish. His sister looked like a burning doll. Her high-pitched screams filled him with a desire to make the pain stop he had never felt before.

Jane could feel every flame licking at her. She sobbed, and with each sob, a tiny bit of her compassion and good-nature left her. By the time the fire reached her chest, she was as bitter as an old hag.

Suddenly, a dark figure appeared out of the darkness. With a bucket of water, he stomped the fire out. What really killed Alec then was the fact that that didn't stop his sister's screaming.

The man untied the twins. He lifted Jane in his arms and ordered a woman to take Alec. She raised him effortlessly and cradled him to her chest, whispering soothing words to him.

The twins huddle together in their bed. Alec wraps his arms around his sister, just like he does every night. He knows that, if she could, she would be crying.


	5. Chapter 5: Blue eyes

At night, the Volturi Castle is quiet. Chelsea sits by the window in her room, reveling in it, finally finding peace.

Outside, she can hear the traffic on the highway, rushing, never-stopping. She hates it, hates the way the noise disturbs the quiet, because it reminds her of the little, silent park and the way the tiny tire-swing squeaked under his weight so many decades ago.

And yet, she has found peace.

She was just a little girl, after all, barely thirteen when it happened – and yet, she remembers. She wishes she couldn't.

World War II was terrible for her people, a bad time to be born Jewish, and a German, at that. Her parents shouldn't have brought her into such a cruel world, not when a war was killing everyone…

But they did. And she ended up being dragged from the tire swing by the handsome, blonde-and-blue-eyed Nazi soldier.

Blue eyes. The eyes of Death.

Faces, so many faces, all etched into the back of her eyelids for eternity. Leering, shouting, cursing at her – some even spitting – and she can't make them stop, because she isn't strong enough, because she's just a girl, and they…

Bottles. They throw beer bottles at her while she hangs by her chest under that tree. She doesn't know who hung her there, doesn't even remember who lifted her skirt and pushed into her, but they did, and now all she has left is pain. So much pain.

"Sing to us!" They yell, drunk "Sing for your life, you Jewish witch"

And so she sings, because she knows they're right, knows they'll kill her without hesitation if she doesn't – and she couldn't _bear_ the sound of her heart, beating as fast as a mockingbird's, stopping, silent, forever.

"_My harp is on the willow-tree,  
Else would I sing, O love, to thee  
A song of long-ago---  
Perchance the song that Miriam sung  
Ere yet Judea's heart was wrung  
By centuries of woe_."

Finally, finally, it's over. The men leave, staggering, vanishing into the forest, leaving a horrified little girl with no more tears to cry and every last shred of her wide-eyed innocence taken from her.

But suddenly, one of the young ones appears. He had stood apart while the rest had their way with her, forced into silence, tears in his eyes. He looked up at her, silently begging her forgiveness, because he couldn't stop them, either, because he couldn't…

With a swift yank, he cuts the rope and takes her in his arms. Chelsea lies there, broken, staring up at his kind face and understanding, for the first time, that blue eyes could love, too. That they could make her feel safe, even in the middle of hell.

With one last hug, he left her by the road and scuttled away into the darkness, sure that she would be OK.

And after all those years, she was.

* * *

**OK, GUYS, PLEASE, INSPIRE ME. I NEED WORDS, IDEAS, CHARACTERS!!!!**

**ANYTHING!!!**

**THANKS TO twilightlover10121 FOR THIS IDEA!!!!!!!!!!**

**XOXO**

**LIZZY**

**PD. REVIEW! AND READ MY OTHER STORIES, FLYING HIGH, TWILIGHT PARODY AND WHAT MY GIRLFRIEND DOESN'T KNOW!**


	6. Chapter 6: Bloodstained uniform

_

* * *

_

Nazi.

Afton hates the word passionately. How can two syllables hold so many decades of pain? Because pain doesn't end with the war, it doesn't die with the soldiers. Pain lives on, never-ending, popping up unexpectedly, feeding on the souls of the people that lost a loved one or saw something the shouldn't.

Pain is powerful. But so is love.

He was just a kid. He keeps telling himself that he was just a freaking kid. A stupid, insensitive one, but a kid.

Afton shouldn't have enlisted. All he wanted was to be a carpenter, to slowly shape wood until it became as beautiful as he wanted it to be. He loved carving almost as much as his father loved war.

They enlisted together.

World War II was... indescribable. All he recalls is screaming, so much screaming, people turned into animals from pain. Because war and pain are lovers, never parting, both giving and taking in a relationship only as old as man himself. Animals don't make war.

Everyone pities the Jews for what they suffered. As well they should. But no one can understand that maybe he didn't want to be a soldier, that he didn't hate them, that he only did what was expected of him. No one thinks that Afton suffered, too.

The one thing he remembers clearly was what happened that terrible afternoon before it all started- terrible because he hurt her, but also wonderful, because he met her. Back when it was all practice.

He and his friends were on their way home, crossing through a little forest beside a Jewish ghetto in their new uniforms. They didn't understand what they were doing, what they were training to do. They didn't know how horrible it is to end a life- to wipe away opinions, ideas, memories that could never be duplicated, never be replaced.

They had yet to learn that Death is always a waste. And by the time they did, his uniform was stained with blood.

Hans was the one who stumbled upon her. He had gone to take a leak and heard singing. When he returned, he was dragging a terrified little girl by the arm.

She didn't see him. Didn't see the way his eyes widened when he took her in. She was utterly gorgeous, her beauty dark and proud and captivating. He instantly loved the way she held her neck, the way her dark hair fell like a river, the way her chest rose and fell with each breath.

_Perfect,_ he thought. _She's perfect._

It was against his very nature to see them hurt her, to watch the way they took away her pride, her tears, her clothes…

Every tear, every yell hurt him, stabbed him. For the first time, he truly knew pain.

And then, finally, it was over. They left her hanging there, like she was just a thing. Like she could be thrown away.

He returned as soon as they left. Her tear-stained face called him, pulled him to her. To where he belong.

He did the best he could and left her. But when Afton saw Chelsea again, she was a vampire. And then all was right again.

* * *

**Review to suggest words and characters! Oh, and if you liked this story, you'll like Best Served Cold, my one-shot.**


	7. Chapter 7: The old Music Box

Russia – a land of wide, snowy plains and mountains, of gorgeous cities and marvelous palaces. Felix's home.

He has taken great pains to remember everything. Why would he want to forget her? His beloved Grand Duchess. Marie. The girl with the caramel hair and the laughing blue eyes. The flirt that is remembered by historians under her sister Anastasia's shadow.

He met her as a stable boy. Her perfume had wafted into the room seconds before her, making him whirl around to face her. Making her laugh.

And, so, an Imperial Princess and a servant fell in love. Felix was 15. Marie was a year younger. The unthinkable had happened.

She had a music box. A pink, round trinket with a ballet dancer inside and a song that played every time it was opened. It was, of course, terribly cliché. They both adored it, playing it again and again during their secret meetings. A few words and some stolen kisses here and there were all Felix needed to live.

And how he lived!

Until the revolution began. The Bolsheviks took the royal family hostage in a large house, and Felix infiltrated their ranks as a spy. He knew he had to save her. He had to be strong enough. For her, his nineteen-year-old love.

They dragged them all to the basement. Felix and a friend were posted as sentries outside the door, their muskets ready for action.

Seven shots rang out and Marie shrieked. She pounded on the door, begging for help. Felix opened it and she fainted in his arms. They thought she was dead. He knew she wasn't, and prayed for strength to save her – who else would?

When they checked the corpses for a pulse, she woke up screaming. Her family lay on the floor, dead, blood all around them. Neither of them ever forgot the horrible sight.

July 17, 1918 was the day his heart and soul died. Marie was taken from his arms and Felix was ordered to leave the room. One last, final shot rang out, and when he burst in a moment later, she was on the floor, dead at last, her prized music box clutched to her chest beneath her dress.

In a rage, Felix flew to Italy. He wandered the streets stark, raving mad until he was turned into a vampire, just another jewel for Aro's collection. He had gotten the strength to save his Marie when he no longer needed it.

And in the Volturi Castle, the old music box can be heard playing.

* * *

**The Marie story is real. She was Grand Duchess Anastasia's older sister. You know, Anastasia, the one from the Disney movie. Yeah. She really was beautiful, and a flirt. And nice. She did have blue eyes and light hair. Her picture is here DOT **

**Reviews with prompts are appreciated. And anonimous reviews are now available.**

**Thanks to twilightlova10121 for the Chelsea idea (tire swings squeaking) and to MissyTheVampire for her suggestion that I _will _use. Really.**


	8. Chapter 8: Ten Paper Planes

Demetri got his Russian name from his grandfather. He had immigrated to America, found a name, a job, a wife. But he still didn't manage to escape from the secrets of the old country.

Little Dimka stayed with his grandparents every summer. Their farm was a little boy's paradise. There were creeks, woods, nests of every kind, cows, pigs, sheep and many places to hide.

It was terribly easy to hide on that huge farm.

One day, a Russian government agent lit the palce on fire. Demetri's grandfather had, apparently, earned the money for his farm by selling priceless secrets. And, of course, the government didn't like that.

Just like that, life was turned upside down. Demetri and his grandparents were whisked away to a Russian prison. The little boy saw his beloved Grandpapa die beaten by other members of their cell while his grandmamma begged them to let him live. She died the same way a month afterwards, leaving the 10-year-old child all alone and without the possibility of escape or release - excluding death.

So he looked out the barred window with the eyes of a child that had seen things he shouldn't have. And while he did, he built paper planes so he could fly away.

Soon, Dimka's developing muscles and endearing attitude led him to become a favorite amongst the other prisoners. He heard their stories, tales of heartbreak and woe, of injustice and betrayal. Tales of people that had spoken their minds when the one thing their rulers wanted was for them to keep them shut. In prison, Demetri became an expert on pain.

By the time he was seventeen, he had learned how to pick a lock, several languages, and all the ways used to torture a man – legal or illegal. But what made Demetri dangerous, truly dangerous, was the fact that he knew how to break someone's spirit. And when you do that, you can do anything, control anyone.

Once he got out, ten years had gone by. Uselessly, Demetri tried to go back to his home. He did his best to track down his family, to find them, to make sure they were all _alive_. But his parents had vanished without a trace, fleeing from the past. And once again, Dimka was all alone.

He became a professional tracker, relying on his wit to find people for a business. His reputation grew wildly, people from everywhere consulted him. And, finally, the Volturi claimed him as their own, making him disappear once again.

He is alone, now. He always has been. Demetri knows no other way, and if he once did, he no longer remembers it.

And the ten paper planes he once built sit by his window, waiting patiently for him to escape.


	9. Chapter 9: Spanish Ballads corrected

The screaming was not normal. It was not a sound caused by pain – that was common enough. It was caused by anger, pure rage that was blacker tan death, the kind of ire triggered by hate. Yes, Santiago's parents hated each other, thought he loved them both.

He always loved them too much for his own good.

The poor kid was frightened into an almost perpetual silence. His parents never spoke softly to one another – when they even spoke. He heard cruel insults shouted between spouses and could not believe that that was love. He knew it wasn't. Everyone in town knew it wasn't.

His mother's fingers were always gentle with him, caressing his baby face with love. She crooned and played with him, twirling him round and dancing. Somehow, she always seemed to be dancing, even while she picked corn in the fields or washed the dishes.

Santiago's father was – well, he was a good provider, and that was something, at least, because a good husband he most certainly was not. He told his child stories, enchanting tales of brave knights fighting colorful dragons, of lands where huge birds talked like humans. He lived in a fantasy world of his own all the time, except for when he was singing.

The disastrous marriage was a product of a common love for music. Isabel loved dancing to it, twisting and turning merrily. Fernando enjoyed making it, stretching his deep voice into the long notes of the Spanish ballads that they both adored. But a marriage cannot survive on the love of music alone, and Santiago's parents soon learned that the only time when they could stand each other was at Christmas, when they all gathered around the fire and talked.

One day, when Santiago was thirteen, his father didn't come back from work on time. His worried mother soothed his fears away and put him to bed as soon as she was able to. Then, she scurried off to the tavern to bring her husband back – if he was there.

And he was. Drunker than ever, Fernando flew into a rage when Isabel begged him to go back home with her. A bottle in his hand, he chased her all the way to the front of their house, threatening to kill her while yelling at the top of his lungs. And little Santiago woke up.

He ran downstairs just in time to see his father hit his mom with the broken bottle. Tears and blood mingled down her face as she scrambled away from him. Quietly, as was his custom, Santiago slipped away and into the barn. Desperate, he grabbed an axe, willing to do anything to protect his mother. He knew men should not hit women. That was wrong.

His mother shrieked for him to run, but Santi was tired of running. If he did not stop, he told his father, he would hack his brains out immediately. Fernando laughed – but when the axe nearly struck him in the head, he ran. He ran all the way down onto the riverbank, and his son – his beloved son – pushed him in. For his mother's sake.

Too bad she abandoned her son afterwards and ran off with a priest.

Santiago tried to follow his mother, his heart broken. He had killed his father – his own father, who told him stories and sang and worked so much. It was not surprising that he got lost after he left Spain and stumbled his way to Volterra, where Aro found him with bloody legs and arms. He was so impressed by his bravery, he kept the fifteen-year-old until he was ready to be turned.

And every day at dawn, the Volturi Castle is once more filled with Santiago's painful screaming.

* * *

**I tried, guys. I swear I did, but... oh, well. Was it good? Bad? Terrible?**

**I will gladly take suggestions as to who to hurt next and how (very important) because my brain just melted.**

**_REVIEW!_**

**Love you all!**

**xoxo**

**Lizzy**


	10. Chapter 10: The Bible Queen

Sulpicia spends her life locked in a tower, watching the people below go by slowly. Their lives are so fragile, their problems so insignificant to her. They are mere pawns in a chessboard – a chessboard of which she is queen.

_Love is patient._

She waits for her Aro every day while reading the silver Bible on her window seat, the rays of the setting sun bathing her in the light from the stained glass. Sulpicia is waiting, always waiting.

_Love is kind._

He killed Didyme. His own sister. And she could not help but think that he was not a monster, even though Marcus had died, too. Even though he kept him alive for power. Even though he would kill her – her! His own mate – for power. Sulpicia will always forgive him.

_It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud._

Women constantly visit the Volturi. Gorgeous seductresses arrive from all over the world, searching for power – his power. And Aro looks at them, what man wouldn't? And when they're powerful, he has bedded them, Sulpicia watching from the shadows. And afterwards, when she's returned from her walk in the garden and he's washing them off of him, he always knows she'll come back. Always.

_It is not rude, it is not self-seeking._

Aro used to be poor. So did Sulpicia. All her dreams of pretty dresses evaporated as soon as she met him, though. She wouldn't have minded spending eternity naked – as long as he was by her side. Naked, of course.

_It always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres._

Power is, in the end, the one thing Aro loves unconditionally, the one thing he cannot live without. Sulpicia knows this, and she includes herself in this category. It hurts her so bad, knowing he doesn't love her enough – enough to die, like she would. Like she still will.

They are such a messed-up couple. And such a beautiful one.

_Love never fails._


End file.
